arachnophobes everywhere

Our 18 year old daughter rang us (from Leicestershire)while we were in Scotland to say she was stuck in her bedroom because there was a spider on the landing! She was most put out when we said that it was probably a bit too far. She then rang her sister's husband and persuaded him to come and pick it up and release it at the top of the road!

It's not spiders that turn me rigid and make me keel over like a felled tree, but I do understand that cold terror. However silly it seems, a phobia is a real fear, although irrational. If it can be overcome, it's worth it.

Nanban Not massively romantic, but incredibly thoughtful.

Thoughtfulness is romantic.

They are the one thing that give me the screaming adjabs. I have been known to call a neighbour in to remove one hairy blank 8ft specimen!

Most insects and creepy crawlies give me the galloping adjabs, but wasps, daddy-long-legs and spiders scare me the most. Hubby can`t understand that although I love butterflies, I`m terrified of moths, and that I love holding caterpillars and snakes, but will run a mile from a worm!

If you wish to live and thrive,let the spider stay alive. I quite like the thought that I'm sharing my house ( and my narrowboat) with spiders.

No, definitely not, there's no spider like a dead spider - and forget all that putting it out, the damn things simply turn around and come straight back in. And oh dear, my next ambition in life was to get a narrowboat - now that's not gonna happen.

By the way people the conker trick does definitely work - a fresh conker in each and every corner of every room stops them coming in but they must be changed at the beginning of each new season. So, I have home more or less sorted but elsewhere, tricky, very tricky.

You should borrow my basset hound, Nell! She patrols my sitting room and kitchen, scanning carpets, corners and ceilings for any creature that has had the nerve to infiltrate her domain. If she spots a spider she tracks it until it's in reach, then pounces and teases it mercilessly till it gives up the ghost and drops dead. Then she walks away, her tail going round like helicopter blades.

I've got one of those spider catchers from Lakeland [I think it was from] and it's absolutely fantastic. I just suck em up and take them outside away from the house before switching up and off they go to tell their friends. I've not tried it on the thick legged fat bodied monsters yet though.

Anything with a hairy body and more than four legs scares me rigid. Last summer we spent 2 weeks in Italy and the lovely romantic evenings sitting outside the house with glass of wine were spoiled totally by flying beetles the size of bats (which I love by the way). Ugh!! and if it wasn't beetles it was moths and scorpions inside the house. I felt I was on tenterhooks all the time.

I keep meaning to get myself a spidercatcher, I can't kill them, because I generally can't get close enough to them

Spider catchers from Lakeland are great but not big enough to scoop up a scorpion. My BIL used to have a clever device which was rectangular and on a pole, took care of the scorpions without getting too close. Conkers do work, I did it in the autumn and i did not have one spider but the conkers got thrown out with the rubble during building and now the spiders are back, roll on conker season.

Mr Phoenix, (6ft 2" and well built) is totally beetle phobic. The smallest one will turn him into a big wuss. I think it might stem from when he worked in Saudi and found himslf billeted in a flat with an Arab style toilet that was brimming with cockroaches..........

I remember when DS2 (then aged 12) came to stay carrying a special insect container with 2 maybugs inside. Mr P. dashed into the house and locked himself into the bathroom, until assurances were given that they were safely outside.

Bless!

The very thought of having something to pick a spider up in, let alone carry it anywhere - no, not possible. Ugh. Instead spider whackers [really those plastic fly swats with long handles, the accent on the long of course] sorts it out for me - with the added bonus that a dead spider can't run back in again!

Just an update - hypnotherapy didn't work past the first huge spider!

The only creature that I cannot stand is a cockroach which is hard luck when I am travelling in the tropics!
I now live in a second floor flat at an altitude of 1100 metres (about 3575') and I can recommend it for all insectphobes - I don't even get a fly!

Greatnan I so agree cockroaches are my phobia.
jeni an 8ft spider!! wow I think you should have called the zoo.
I keep an an empty large yoghurt pot handy.Plonk it over the spider and leave till someone calls who can put it outside -or if I feel brave slide a card under it and release in the garden.-

Oh, what a shame, Nanban! I was hoping you'd be cured, and that would have given me the incentive to try hypnotherapy....just the thought of those hairy black legs brings me out in a cold sweat.

Jeni, please elaborate on the 8 ft spider!

numberplease! Do you really want to put jeni through all that trauma again?
Anyway, all spiders have eight feet!

Quite!

Ah, but at a risk of being thought pedantic, Jeni didn`t SAY 8 FEET, she said 8ft, which would put the spider into quite a different category altogether!!

It was a joke, numberplease!

Dyson. Leave it running for a while so the centrifugal whizzing has a chance to properly chop it sort it out. Switch off and stuff kitchen roll in the end of the tube. Just in case.